Einstein's Relativity : Chapter 1

Classical Mechanics: Describing the old view of Space and Time

In this first section, we will get to know how space and time were interpreted by the classical mechanics.
Mechanics actually is the field that deals with how the things change their position with respect to time. When we talk about such things like space and time, the first thing that comes to one’s mind is like it’s a very obvious thing but actually it is not. What do you mean by Space? What do you mean by Time? I would definitely get many answers like space can be described as a place or position. And time is just the time observed by the observer. This answer would never ever satisfy a real physicist. Because these type of definitions never have anything specific in them. Classical Mechanics also describes these things in the most natural way and that is the simpler part. It describes space as a position and time to be something very absolute and definite. But this is really a very contradicting statement as it does not prove to be a thing applicable in all the practical situations. Let us face the contradiction.
Let us assume a passenger who is sitting in a bus moving with a uniform velocity. He picked out a stone out of his pocket and then just dropped it without applying any force. When he observes the falling stone, he sees it going in the straightway path i.e. its trajectory follows a linear equation. While a man who is standing outside and observing the stone sees it following the parabolic path. Wait! Wait! Wait! How can this be possible? Maybe we did some mistake. Let us do it again but now the two men will have identical and synchronized clocks with them as well. When we repeat the experiment same results are observed. From the observations made we get to know that the stone was having two positions at a particular instant of time. Means if we have infinite observers following different paths with different velocities then the stone will have infinite positions at one instant of time and which is a very absolute and certain thing according to the classical mechanics. And which is obviously doesn’t make sense in anyway.
This gives rise to the basic contradiction with the definition of Space and time given by the Classical Mechanics.

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